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#14 Minority Issues - Spring 2010 - 筆譯研究方法專論

張貼者： NTNU GITI BLOG on 2010年2月22日 星期一
標籤：
#14 Minority Issues
Michael Cronin, “The Cracked Looking Glass of Servants: Translation and
Minority Languages in a Global Age,” & Alexandra Jaffe, “Locating Power:
Corsican Translation and Their Critics” in Critical Readings in Translation
Studies Ed. Mona Baker

4 意見:

charlotte wu 提到...

The translation of minority language is a very interesting issue. In the first article, Cronin talks about the translation of majority language into minority language creating a mirror image of the majority language in the minority language. By this metaphor of mirror image, Cronin then proposes two modes of translation in the minority language context: translation as assimilation and translation as diversification. This tension between acceptance or resistance of foreign language translation has longed been discussed in translation studies. However, I think it is particularly meaningful to talk about this tension in the minority language context. Cronin points out one crucial point: non-fluency can be regarded as a threat to the user of minority languages. Therefore, whether to accept or resist the majority language becomes a more complicated problem, as the threat of non-fluency in translating the majority language may imply a threat in economic/employment market. This is also obvious in Taiwan. We can see many colleges are opening ‘international’ courses, in which teachers are required to teach in English. What is problematic here is that despite they are in fact promoting the use of English in class; they are saying this is the ‘international’ course. And no reference to any other foreign language is ever provided to the course. The domination of English has resulted in not only the mis-interpretation of ‘English as international’ but also in the dissemination of other languages in the local context. Namely, even though there are so many languages, the domination of English has compressed the interests as well as channels for Taiwanese people to get access to other foreign languages. Getting to know other foreign languages is regarded as secondary or even non-essential, as they may eventually be translated into English. In this case, with the domination of English, both Mandarin and other foreign languages become minority language in Taiwan, only in different ways. In terms of Mandarin, the acceptance and resistance of English lies is related to the identity of Taiwan. We are approaching to English in the eye of Taiwanese. However, in terms of other foreign languages, we are approaching to the issue in the eye of English. That is, whether we accept or reject another foreign language depends on the particular language’s status compared to English. If the status of the language is dominating like English in certain ways, it is easier for that language to be accepted. If not, then it is possible that no interests would be shown to that language (not to mention resistance!)

This echoes with Jaffe’s argument on the material selection in minority language context. Jaffe argues that translators in Corsica choose their source text in terms of relevance to the Corsican context. I think, in Taiwan, the material selection of the source text as well as the source language is decided by the utilitarianism. And the criterion for the ‘usefulness’ may be largely influenced by the domination of English. Hence, I totally agree with Cronin’s argument of minority as a relative concept. For instance, in Taiwan, minority is probably not restricted in one language pair (e.g. English—Mandarin). The domination of English also makes other foreign languages become minority in Taiwan. This is what that never occurs to me before.

2010年5月25日 上午11:35
charlotte wu 提到...
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2010年5月25日 上午11:36
Unknown 提到...

This week’s readings ‘centre’ on some of the issues that minority languages/cultures face as they attempt to ‘manoeuvre’ within the oft-‘pernickety’ world of power relations. I ‘apologise’ for this not-so-‘skilful’ attempt to ‘emphasise’ differences in spelling ‘practises’ between Canada and its ‘neighbour’ to the South, the US, but ‘analysing’ the situation in the world today we ‘realise’ that many forms of “media” have worked to ‘popularise’ the belief that US English should be ‘favoured’. Ha! Just thought that I would add a spot of ‘humour’, or ‘colour’ perhaps, to this week’s post!
Alexandra Jaffe’s discussion of Corsican-French power relations highlighted several important points pertaining to the translation of minority languages. For example, the super-political nature of translation as it pertains to languages that exist in an essentially diglossic relationship. In such a case, translation from the high-prestige language, or high-prestige dialect, into the low-prestige one necessarily becomes a political statement about the nature of the diaglossic relationship itself. Moreover, as we saw in Jaffe’s article, this political statement may be interpreted in a number of ways. In the Corsican-French case, there were those who saw the translation of the high-prestige French into the low-prestige Corsican as an affirmation of the capacity of Corsican to stand free as an independent language. In contrast, there were others who disagreed with this assessment and, instead, saw this translation from high-prestige language to low-prestige language as merely deepening Corsican’s dependence on French as literary source language.
Another interesting point brought up in Jaffe’s article is the idea that no matter what the Corsican writers/translators did they were inevitable haunted by a variety of complicated power-struggle related issues that are at the core of the Corsican experience itself. This idea is described quite clearly in the final paragraph of the article in which Jaffe explains that although the Corsican translators “tried to locate power in the prerogative to deny and transcend linguistic hierarchy,” there was just not a “strong enough base of consumers to instil the new vision of power in lived experience.” Interestingly, before reading the article I quickly glanced at the editor’s introduction and immediately concluded that the success, or failure, of the proposed project (ie. translation from high-prestige to low-prestige language) would ultimately boil down to economics!

2010年5月26日 凌晨1:23
Craig 提到...

Michael Cronin extends last week's discussion about the disappearance of linguistic diversity through colonization, and more recently globalization. This week we fast forward to the present where cultural hybridity is already a fact and it seems there is little that can be done other than mourn the passing of thousands of the world's languages. Cronin blames technology for the ever expanding hegemony of English, yet until the creation of scientific and technological knowledge is conducted and published in minority languages, I don't see a way out of this crisis. He continues to elaborate the crisis of disappearing or changing minority languages, which seems to boil down to economics unfortunately. Cronin discusses Stiener's statement that much knowledge production has moved to the sciences, which is conducted in unnatural languages that are specialized subsets of English, and therefore reinforce the hegemony of English. It seems any system of symbols would work, yet basing these systems on minority languages would do little to preserve the spirit of those languages, and again information transfer generally moves from English, the language in which many scientific notions are conceived, to minority languages which tend to receive more than just “content” in the process of translation.

Alexandra Jaffe discusses Corsican identity formation and nation building around language and how this is disrupted/produced by translation. Jaffe's discussion is interesting for the variety of polarizing arguments that have arisen around the translation of texts from French into Corsican. I found the discussion of Barthes and his notion of jouissance— a violation of linguistic norms— very interesting. Jaffee points out that a strong system of norms must first be in place before meaningful violation can take place, and that weak languages often lack well formed norms. The abundance of rules in the English language make it ripe for more experimental approaches to writing, it is a shame more translators of foreign literatures into English do not avail themselves of jouissance and share it with their readers. Also the essentialist view of pure language as identity forming not only seems difficult to maintain, but also it seems unlikely that a pure language would represent the identity of any living person in our hybridized world of today. It is also nice to see Jaffe bring out Rafael's observation of the discursive quality of the Castilian conquest of the Philippines, which manifested in the domestication of Christianity.

2010年5月26日 凌晨1:52

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